Introduction

Grasshoppers and crickets belong to the order Orthoptera, a group of insects that are characterised by having greatly enlarged hind legs that allow them to jump. In Britain, the grasshoppers are just outnumbered by the bush-crickets with 11 species to 13. Then there are three species of crickets, one scaly cricket and even a mole cricket which has modified front legs enabling it to dig. There are also three species of groundhopper.

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The bush-crickets have very long antennae compared to the grasshoppers and females are easily distinguished from males by having a large ovipositor projecting from the rear of the abdomen. This fearsome looking appendage is used to slit open plant tissues enabling the female to insert her eggs where they can safely survive the winter. Most have a fairly omnivorous diet, feeding on plant leaves and seeds as well as small insects. Some aren’t above eating other orthopterans either!

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The grasshoppers have comparatively short antennae compared to the crickets and feed on plant material, especially grasses. Nearly all species of Orthoptera have wings although in some these are very poorly developed so that they can’t fly (the Scaly Cricket is actually wingless). Apart from the groundhoppers, these insects ‘sing’ to attract mates in a process known as stridulation. In grasshoppers this is done by rubbing the hind leg against the wing membrane while the different types of cricket rub their wings together in order to produce sound. Each species produces its own unique ‘song’ which can be a useful aid in identification and enable you to find the insect if it is hidden away amongst vegetation.

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I tend to associate these insects with long hot summers, when the adults are to be regularly heard reeling or chirruping away but some nymphs are just starting to appear now (I found my first tiny grasshopper in the garden on 20^th April). There aren’t that many species in Britain so they are a nice group to ‘tick-off’ in your local area. The bush-crickets pose few identification problems but the grasshoppers can be quite tricky. As they like hot dry weather and are often found in rather nice places, they are a real pleasure to seek out.

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Most spend the winter as eggs and after hatching shed their skins a number of times as they grow and develop. This process of moulting goes by the technical term of ecdysis. These early nymphal stages are called instars and look very much like smaller versions of the adult although they do not possess proper wings, just wing buds as they develop.  After the final moult the fully winged adult insect emerges. 

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This whole process is known as incomplete metamorphosis. Most species achieve adulthood in their first year after hatching and then die after mating and egg-laying has taken place, often surviving until the first frosts. Crickets can take two years to mature as do the groundhoppers, overwintering as nymphs or adults. 

Garden Species

My own garden barely scrapes by with a meagre six species, one of which has only put in a single appearance. A mosaic of micro-habitats is required to support several species in a small garden. The Field Grasshopper (Chorthippus brunneus) is the probably the commonest species in Britain and will be present in many gardens as it prefers shorter grass whereas the Meadow Grasshopper (Chorthippus parallelus) likes longer grass. 

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We managed to have both species in our old garden where we backed onto Earlham Cemetery which is where the Meadow Grasshopper undoubtedly colonised from. Where we are now is a bit of a barren dessert with our garden a green oasis so we only regularly have the Field Grasshopper. In the exceptionally long, hot (drought-ridden) summer of 2018 we had a single record of Common Green Grasshopper (Omocestus viridulus) singing in the garden, never to be seen or heard from again.

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We fare better with the bush-crickets, having a few Speckled (Leptophyes punctatissima) each year and also Oak (Meconema thalassinum). The latter are nocturnal and are occasionally attracted to the light of the moth trap or venture indoors of an evening where they are discovered on the ceiling. They also get retrieved from the garden waste bin after a bit of judicious pruning of neighbouring shrubs overhanging our garden. Roesel’s Bush-crickets (Metrioptera roeselii) have put in an appearance a couple of times, the long-winged or macropterous form that can be present in colonies some years. I have also heard them on the scrubby corner of the road in long grass and also the allotments around the corner from our house. 

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Our ‘star’ orthopteran though is the Long-winged Conehead (Conocephalus fuscus). This species appeared on our allotment in 2010 and has built up a small but thriving population. It was with great delight that I heard one in our own garden in 2017 and then found a few males and females in our mini meadow. They bred successfully and are still with us although their numbers were down last year. Having them in the garden means that I have had plenty of opportunities to watch their behaviour, including discovering one as it shed its skin for the final time and became an adult. I have also seen females probing plant stems with their ovipositor and then egg-laying and been amused by the way they shimmy around plant stems to hide when you peer too close. 

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Other Norfolk Species

Compared with southern England, I feel we are fairly impoverished in Norfolk when it comes to our orthopteran fauna although we have a great many more than northern England or Scotland. The Bog Bush-cricket is a bit of a speciality, occurring on wet heathland and we are fortunate in having a small out-lying population of Great Green Bush-crickets, the largest of the British species. 

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Several species are actually benefitting from the long hot summers related to climate change and are expanding their ranges. Roesel’s Bush-cricket (Metrioptera roeselii) has seen a huge change in its distribution as has the Long-winged Conehead and we also now have Stripe-winged Grasshoppers (Stenobothrus lineatus) nearby on Mousehold Heath. Although some species seem to be benefitting from climate change it is impossible to say how it will pan out in the long run. Milder winters are often bad for certain insects as they need a cold spell in order to hibernate and also for their parasites’ numbers to be kept in check. Climate change sees more extremes of weather so as well as prolonged hot dry spells with little or no rain, our weather also gets ’stuck’ in cold wet spells which many insects don’t cope with particularly well.

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I first encountered the Bog Bush-cricket (Metrioptera brachyptera) on Buxton Heath when I used to belong to the Buxton Heath Wildlife Group, carrying out conservation work at the weekends. Buxton Heath is a local nature reserve with an area of heathland and a valley mire with a chalk stream running through giving varied habitats over a relatively small area. There were also Common and Slender Groundhoppers to seek out as well as Dark Bush-crickets and I was shown my first Short-winged Coneheads (Conocephalus dorsalis).

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Lesser Marsh (Chorthippus albomarginatus) and Mottled Grasshoppers (Myrmeleotettix maculatus) are pretty plentiful and widespread in the county and I have found them numerous times, especially Mottled, either around the coast or inland in ‘Brecky’ areas. Grasshoppers can look pretty similar to the untrained eye but there are subtle differences to look out for including the shape of the pronotum (the bit behind the head covering the top of the thorax). The Lesser Marsh has a straight sided pronotum whereas the Mottled’s is pinched in.

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We also have a population of Great Green Bush-crickets (Tettigonia viridissima) in Norfolk too. This is the largest species of Orthoptera in the UK, a whopping two inches long in the body, increased by the length of the wings. We have made a couple of attempts to see these beauties, succeeding on the second go. It involved a train ride out to a riverside pub where we had dinner and a couple of beers, then a gentle circuitous stroll through the gathering dusk back to the station, stopping to listen for the incessant reeling calls, likened to an electric sewing machine, from every bramble bush we passed. 

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With luck and patience we got a good view of several of these truly splendid creatures until darkness completely overtook us and then we sauntered on through the gloom serenaded by the distancing stridulations with just the constant zit-zit calls of Dark Bush-crickets for company.

Further Afield

A trip cycling around the New Forest and camping back in 1989 had us hopeful of finding all sorts of ‘goodies’. One highlight was Wood Cricket (Nemobius sylvestris) that we tracked down after hearing them calling. This species is pretty tricky to locate; it has quite a high-pitched call and likes to skulk around in leaf litter. The crickets are similar to bush-crickets in having long antennae and an obvious ovipositor in the females. They are more adapted to running and/or burrowing so they have smaller, less powerful hind legs. 

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Stripe-winged Grasshopper (Stenobothrus lineatus) was a bonus species I found when we stumbled upon Collared Hill when cycling around Somerset in 2005. We stopped purely by chance at the entrance to the reserve and saw a notice about Large Blue Butterflies so just had to go and look. We found the butterflies but equally importantly for me I found Stripe-winged Grasshopper by hearing its call, which I didn’t recognise. Jeremy had to wait for the grasshopper to make its way to Norfolk before catching up with it!

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An invitation to stay with a friend in southern Spain to look for migrating birds in spring 1993 led to one of our best ever wildlife encounters. We went for a walk along rough ground around our friend’s apartment, listening to the song flights of the wonderfully named Zitting Cisticola (alas, more commonly called a Fan-tailed Warbler) when we almost trod on a Mole Cricket (Gryllotalpa gryllotalpa) that suddenly appeared on the track in front of us. Unfortunately we had a short supply of 35mm film in our good old Praktica SLR camera so only got the one photo of this memorable beastie. They are extremely rare in Britain so I count myself fortunate indeed to have seen this one.

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In 2012 we had a cycle-touring trip around the Netherlands that included a visit to the De Hoge Veluwe National Park. It reminded us of the best areas of Breckland in Norfolk but on a much larger scale. As we cycled slowly along we kept hearing crickets calling. After a couple of attempts we managed to locate the creature creating the sound – a wonderful Field Cricket (Gryllus campestris). After a bit more listening and careful searching we found a handful more. They do occur in Britain but are very rare, restricted to only a handful of sites but there is an ongoing reintroduction programme that seems to be proving successful

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Back Home

In the 1990s I worked in a hospital laboratory. In the winter months, if you went down to the autoclave rooms when it was dark you would often hear the chirping of House Crickets (Acheta domesticus). This is a species that generally only survives indoors in the warmth in this country although they can sometimes be found around rubbish tips where they presumably survive the winter amongst the warmth of decomposing material. One day I came across one out in the open so I popped it in a specimen pot so I could draw it (I also took it home so my husband could see it but returned it the next day). 

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What Next?

Wart-biter (Decticus verrucivorus) and Grey Bush-cricket (Platycleis albopunctata) are two species I would like to see one day and I would love to see and hear Field Crickets in Britain. In the meantime I’ll be content if I can go and find the Norfolk Great Green Bush-crickets again and listen to their song in the darkness. Otherwise I would really like to find a Groundhopper (Tetrix sp.) in the garden. They like areas of bare ground where they feed on lichens, algae and mosses which is a habitat that is in short supply in our garden where nature often has its way and plants happily seed into every available space. But one may turn up on the driveway one day – at our previous house the only one I ever found was on the pavement outside the front gate so I have hope that one will put in an appearance some time.

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Artwork

Grasshoppers and crickets are interesting invertebrates to draw, having their own challenges what with wings, ovipositors (in some) and those large back legs. Once you’ve worked out how exactly they fit together, it’s worth trying to sketch them outside, watching them move around and observing the different ways they stridulate. They don’t often sit still to be sketched so it’s rewarding when you succeed! 

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